November 2004

Blogspam A Problem… No More

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been getting more than my fair share of blogspam of late. I’ve been spending about twenty minutes every three or so days clearing out the ‘moderation’ queue and updating my keyword lists. Worse still, some spam has been getting through nonetheless (hopefully I’ve always been quick to remove it, and so none of you – my readers – have had to see any of it).

So: I’ve implemented a new anti-blogspam solution: whenever you post a comment to my weblog from now on you’ll be asked a simple question. The answer is usually obvious… to a human… but very difficult to automate a computer to answer. I appreciate any feedback on this (why not leave a comment to this post), and I’ll let you know whether it fixes the problem. And, of course, if it does, I’ll offer my code snippet back to the WordPress development team in order to include it, perhaps, with a future version: or, at least, offer it to friends of mine who use similar blog engines and are troubled by spam.

I need sleep.

In other (almost equally geeky) news, I’ve been spending a good deal of time working on my new RockMonkey WikiGame – TromaNightAdventure. If I can keep up a reasonable development rate on it this weekend (which could be tough – I’ve lots to do, and Gareth is visiting and keeps distracting me with cool technology like GPS devices and VoIP telephones), it’ll be ready on Tuesday evening. Watch this space.

More Letters After My Name

News of the day: (here I go, flooding you all with lots of small posts), I’m now Daniel Huntley BEng(Hons) MBCS, ‘cos I’m now a member of the British Computer Society. Not quite sure whether or not this is a good thing, yet, but hey.

Hmm… they’ll be sending me my membership card seperately from my information pack for “security reasons”? WTF?

Oh, and in other news, BBC News is reporting that Internet Explorer’s usage dropped for the first time to less than 90% in recent polls, with Firefox taking up most of the ‘switchers’. This is good news, indeed (as anybody who’s looked at Abnib in (a) Internet Explorer and (b) Any Standards-Compliant Browser will understand).

Forehead Protector?

Strangest thing I’ve seen all week.

Perhaps it’d help if I’d seen this Uzumaki thing… hmm…

Popularity Of The Welsh Language

<ROFLMAO>

Want a giggle? Go to Google and type “old dead language” into the search box (with or without the quotes… either way), and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky!”.

This is the follow-up to my experimental googlebomb the other week. I’ve had my fun, now, and I actually believe it’s possible (I was skeptical when I first read about it, but it turns out that Google really is that easy to manipulate) to pull off a googlebomb of this scale with my limited resources.

In other (equally geeky) news, I’m starting to have trouble with blogspam, and my usual keyword/IP/link-count filters aren’t catching it all… might need a reprogram.

Somebody Writes Of Half-Life 2

Somebody on slashdot writes of Half-Life 2:

Doom 3 tried to generate atmosphere through the lack of light and the monster placement that was obviously designed to scare you. After a while it degenerated into one big black scare job to me, and wasn’t very interesting as a result.

On the other hand, I felt that HL2 did an awesome job of generating atmosphere, without the darkness. That last part was especially interesting to notice. When was the last time you were scared in a computer game while in broad daylight? Or in a peaceful zone? And to continue onto gameplay, when was the last time you had an idea of killing an enemy in the middle of a firefight, and that creative idea that would’ve been impossible in older games simply worked? Yes, I’m talking about the physics engine, and I haven’t seen gameplay this varied since wielding a cursed blanket in NetHack.

I’m willing to sacrifice bump mapping everywhere for the ability to throw bladed flying machines at enemies.

Yum.

Another Wonderful Dudley

Another fantastic Dudley’s Dungeon today. For NetHack fans only.

Quote Of The Day

Heard this today:

“There’s something the Student’s Union don’t want: a silent, invisible, anonymous army of disgruntled students.”

Made me smile.

Smash My Phone

For $12.99, you can have a model smash your phone and publish the video to the internet for you to enjoy again and again. Fucking weird.

Tell Me About Your Heterosexuality

Rediscovered this online – some questions for the heterosexual:

What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
When and how did you first decide that you were a heterosexual?
Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase that you will grow out of?
Is it possible that your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of people of the same sex?
Heterosexuals have histories of failure in gay relationships. Do you think that you may have turned to heterosexuality from fear of rejection?
If you’ve never slept with a person of the same sex, how do you know that you wouldn’t prefer that?
If heterosexuality is normal, why are a disproportionate number of mental patients heterosexual?
To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies, what reaction did you get?
Your heterosexuality doesn’t offend me as long as you leave me alone. But why do so many heterosexuals try to seduce others into that orientation?
Most child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose your children (if you have any) to heterosexuals, especially heterosexual teachers?
Why must heterosexuals be so blatant, making a public display of their heterosexuality? Can’t you just be what you are and keep it quiet?
Heterosexuals always align themselves such narrowly restricted, stereotyped sex-roles. Why do you cling to such unhealthy role-playing?
How can you have a fully satisfying emotional experience with a person of the opposite sex when the obvious physical, biological, and temperamental differences are so vast? How can a man possible understand what pleases a woman sexually and vice versa?
Heterosexual marriage has total social support, yet the divorce rate continues to spiral upwards. Why are there so few stable heterosexual relationships?
Since there are so few happy heterosexuals, techniques have been developed to help people change. Have you tried aversion therapy?
Could you trust a heterosexual therapist / councilor not to try to influence you towards their sexual leanings?
Do heterosexuals hate or distrust others of their own sex? Is that what makes them heterosexual?
Why are heterosexuals so promiscuous; always having ‘affairs’ etc?

Made me smile.

Simpsons, Puppets, And Alcohol

Sat up last night with Bryn and Claire with a cheap bottle of wine and the remains of an expensive bottle of whiskey and watched The Simpsons (Season 3, DVD 2) and Puppets Who Kill (Season 1, the episodes we hadn’t seen yet).

A nice night in.

Weekend

I seem to spend most of my time on this blog posting retrospectively about what I did on any given weekend. Will try to spice things up with a little more thought and debateworthy stuff in the future – I’ve got some ideas. In any case:

Friday was Andy’s gig – not as good as the last one I went to, but still a fab show (and, in particular, some great guitarwork this time around). Claire couldn’t come – she was in Gregynog on a Computer Science away-half-weekend (the replacement for what used to be the “second Aberdyfi weekend” that we used to have in the first year).

Saturday was Troma Night. Rory (visiting) and not-gay Gareth (recently discovered to be in Aberystwyth) came along, as did Claire’s friend Ruth, and a good time was had by all.

And, of course, Sunday was Geek Night. We played Hacker for the first time in ages, as well as a little Fluxx. Matt seems to be a huge fan of the latter – perhaps it apppeals to the mathematician inside him.

Oh, and: Yay!

My Greatest Weakness

This post was censored by its author shortly after its publication. The original contents are believed to be completely lost. See: all censored posts.

<rant>[removed]</rant>

Thanks Dad. Love you Claire. Will all be fine yet.

“Alcohol! Now there’s a temporary solution!”

My Very Own Googlebomb

Partially out of curiosity, partially to point out a flaw in the #aber multipass system, I’ve made my own little googlebomb. For those of you who don’t like reading, a googlebomb is where you manipulate the way that popular search engine Google into falsely linking with great priority a page that it probably should not. I’m sure you all remember “French military victories” and “Weapons of mass destruction”?

Go to Google, type in “Stuii should fix this”, and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”. You’ll be taken to the #aber multipass page of a user who has never existed, a user called “Stuii Should Fix This”.

It’s a pain that when people search for ‘AvaPoet’, the first result is what should be my multipass (but it expired long ago). However, there’s obviously still a lot of places linking to it, so people keep getting that page whenever they look for me. Grr.

In any case; the theory’s been demonstrated plenty of times before… I just wanted to do it for myself. Yay.

Rory’s In Town

Met up with Rory this lunchtime in MGees: looks like he’s working on moving back to AberWorld whenever he can afford it, and running his business from here. I’m not sure how much of a market there is for payware RSS/ATOM newsfeed readers, but I wish him the best of luck in it anyway. Hopefully he’ll be able to find himself some part-time work to “keep the wolf from his door” <ahem> in the meantime.

Anyway; he’s promised that he’s going to drag not-gay Gareth along to Troma Night tomorrow night, so that’s all-good. On which note; does anybody have any objections to a long-anticipated reshowing Overdrawn At The Memory Bank (MST3k edition)? With Paul‘s co-operation, of course.

Improved Viagra Available From Chemists

As of next week, an improved version of Viagra will be available – without prescription – from your local chemist. Just go up to the counter and request Mycoxafloppin. Satisfy your woman! Cure your errectile disorder! Make $$$ fast! No… wait.